Editor’s Note: Berkeleyside, the online news site serving the city of Berkeley, recently asked us about the increase in crows there. Here’s the article we wrote for them.
By Ilana DeBare
“Why are there so many darn crows in Berkeley these days?”
We get that question a lot at Golden Gate Bird Alliance, and the Berkeleyside editors get it too.
It’s not just Berkeley. Crows are on the increase throughout the Bay Area, as are their larger and deeper-voiced cousins, ravens.
Back in the 1980s, Golden Gate Bird Alliance members typically found between 30 and 90 American Crows each year in our Oakland Christmas Bird Count, which includes Berkeley. We typically found fewer than ten Common Ravens.
Since 2010, however, the count has turned up over 1,100 crows and 170 to 300 ravens each year.
A pair of crows on a telephone wire. Photo: Elaine Miller Bond
“Crows have gone from being very uncommon to common to abundant,” said Rusty Scalf,  a Golden Gate Bird Alliance birding instructor who lives in Berkeley. “Ravens used to be unheard of in the city, but now they’re all over the place.
If you’ve seen hundreds of crows flapping and cawing in a single tree — a murder of crows in fact — you might think that 1,100 crows is an understatement, and Berkeley is on the verge of being taken over à la Hitchcock by these bold, loud creatures. You might join the many bird lovers who accuse crows of driving down local songbird populations by stealing and eating their eggs.
But on both these counts, crows get a bum rap. The real crow story is more complicated.
Crows are intensely social and intelligent birds that, like humans, maintain both a family life and a community life.
During breeding season – spring and summer – they spend time with their family, building a nest and raising young on a defined territory. Adult crows usually mate for life. Juvenile crows stick around for several years and help their parents feed the nestlings. (Don’t you wish your teenagers would do that?)
A raven: the larger, deeper voiced cousin of the crow, also on the increase locally. Photo: Elaine Miller Bond
In the winter, on the other hand, crows often come together for the night in huge colonies. Around sunset, they gather at a staging area such as a big tree, calling and flapping and chasing each other.…

By April Rose Sommer
Much to the relief of many Golden Gate Bird Alliance members, the Berkeley City Council voted Tuesday night to delay its pilot program to exterminate Cesar Chavez Park California ground squirrels.
The city had generated broad outcry earlier this year when it announced plans to trap and kill park squirrels as a means to address Regional Water Quality Control Board concerns that squirrel burrows could cause toxics underneath the park to leach into the bay.
But on Tuesday, the Council put the extermination plan on hold and directed the City Manager to report back in two months with a plan and a response to the many questions raised by citizens, councilmembers, and environmental and animal rights organizations, including Golden Gate Bird Alliance.
Councilmember Kriss Worthington led the efforts for a reconsideration of the extermination pilot program and Councilmember Linda Maio was careful to stress that the pilot program would not go forward until the council had revisited the issue.  Councilmember Maxwell Anderson waxed poetic about how the park used to be filled with raptors, the squirrels’ natural predators, and recommended that there be an effort to draw these birds back to the park, while Councilmember Gordon Wozniak complained that there are too many squirrels.
Burrowing Owl and ground squirrel at Cesar Chavez Park / Photo by Penelope Hillemann. http://penelopedia.blogspot.com/2013/02/berkeley-burrowing-owl-lifer-and-white.html
The squirrel extermination scheme was crafted as a response to concerns by the Regional Water Quality Control Board that squirrel burrows could be allowing toxics to leach into the Bay. Cesar Chavez Park is built on top of a landfill that was covered with layers of fill intended to “cap” the old dump’s solid and toxic waste.   Although the bay waters surrounding the park have not tested positive for any leached materials, the Board did direct the City to address the potential risk from squirrel burrows.
The Water Board was careful to distance itself from the City’s extermination plan, though — instead suggesting that enforcement of the no-feeding ordinance may be sufficient to address the large squirrel population. The Board recently issued a FAQ that clearly states “we are not ordering the City to kill the squirrels” and requested that the City supply further data on the burrows and methods of control.
Golden Gate Bird Alliance’s East Bay Conservation Committee researched the issue, submitted a comment letter to the Berkeley City Council, and spoke at Tuesday’s Council meeting .…

By Carol and Steve Lombardi
In early February, 2014 we “traveled with Golden Gate Bird Alliance” on Mark Pretti’s Belize tour.
Belize is small and sparsely populated. Much of its original habitat is intact, so it’s a great place for a nature tour—and Mark is a wonderful guide. Not only did we see over 200 bird species, we also learned a lot about tropical ecology and the other flora and fauna.
Upon landing and surviving the immigration lines, we exited Belize’s teensy airport and met Mark on the sunny sidewalk. After introductions—a quick process with only 10 in the group—we boarded our bus for the short ride to the Radisson. Our original plan was to immediately leave Belize City for Crooked Tree Lodge in the hinterlands. However, heavy rains had closed the road, so we were forced to endure one night in a luxury hotel on the seafront. Birding nearby consoled us with some species we wouldn’t see in the countryside: Scissor-tailed Flycatchers, Cinnamon Hummingbird, Magnificent Frigatebirds, Bronzed Cowbirds, Great Kiskadee, Sandwich Terns, a Merlin, and the first of many Golden-Fronted Woodpeckers.
Slaty-tail Trogon / Photo by Carol Lombardi
Next morning began our trip in earnest with a stop at the Belize Zoo, which offers a small but vivid collection of local fauna—Harpy Eagles, macaws, jaguars, spider and howler monkeys, and adorable tapirs—plus many free-flying birds visiting the water and food containers, including Ruddy Ground Dove, Northern Waterthrush, Chachalaca, Yellow-olive Flycatcher, Yellow-fronted Euphoria, Common Tody Flycatcher, Hooded Warbler, Hepatic and Summer Tanagers, and Yellow-billed Elaenia. Six-foot-long iguanas basked on the ground and in trees.
Our next stop was Guadalcaste National Park, which offers several trails through lowland forest habitat. An Amazon Kingfisher perched along the Belize River and a Howler Monkey family lounged overhead, but the best sightings were from the parking lot: A female White-bellied Emerald carried spiderweb strands to an undisclosed location, a Yellow-billed Tyrannulet patrolled the shady edges, and Olive-throated Parakeets fed on blossoms in the treetops.
After a delicious Caribbean lunch — where we learned the difference between “beans and rice” and “rice and beans” — our bus climbed through damp foothills to Pook’s Hill Preserve for four nights. The cluster of cottages is surrounded by a variety of habitats (including a Mayan ruin), and we explored them all: The forest trails, the open meadow, the creekside tangle. Even a brief stroll across the driveway might yield Slaty-Tailed or Black-headed Trogon, White Hawk, White-collared Seedeater, or Long-billed Hermit—not to mention the local family of Howler Monkeys, an assortment of lizards, and the ever-present leafcutter ants.…

By Alan Hopkins 

Located near San Francisco’s southern border, John McLaren Park is the city’s second-largest park. Its 312 acres have well-developed trails that cross rolling hills and provide ample opportunities to see a diversity of birds. Unlike Golden Gate Park and the Presidio, McLaren is not overrun with joggers and cyclists on weekends. Nor is a birding outing likely to be scuttled due to special events and road closures.

John McLaren was the horticulturist who turned the sand dunes of the Sunset District into Golden Gate Park. A friend of John Muir, he believed that our parks should be “naturalistic” in appearance. Unfortunately, some of his vision seems to have been lost in both parks. In parts of McLaren Park, however, it is possible to feel as if you’re out of the city, though great hilltop vistas bring the city into view.

I first visited McLaren Park some time in the 1970s, possibly for the SF Blues Festival or the SFMoMA soapbox derby. The park became a stop on my Bird Blitz field trips on the way to Candlestick Point Park. In 1990 city birders started the San Francisco Breeding Bird Atlas, and McLaren Park was my area. It was also my area for the Christmas Bird Count for a number of years. Now, as a naturalist for Kids in Parks, I am able to take Visitacion Valley Middle School students into the park and give them their first bird-watching experiences.

John F. Shelley Lake / Photo by Alan Hopkins Red-shouldered Hawk in McLaren Park / Photo by Alan Hopkins

The park has changed quite a bit since I first started visiting: California Quail, Loggerhead Shrikes, and Olive-sided Flycatchers are no longer found there, many of the open fields have been planted with trees, and the ponds have been cleared of the tules where Red-winged Blackbirds nested. But there are still plenty of opportunities to enjoy the birds the park has to offer.

McLaren has a number of habitats. Of most interest are the open grassy slopes used by wintering Western Meadowlarks, Say’s Phoebes, and American Kestrels— species becoming harder to find in San Francisco as their preferred habitat is developed or planted. In the spring, the hills support an array of native wildflowers. The ridgeline along Mansell Street is frequented by local and migrating raptors. The park’s northwestern side has been planted with the usual cosmopolitan trees found in other city parks, and the species are similar: Downy Woodpecker, Hutton’s Vireo, Chestnut-backed Chickadee, Pygmy Nuthatch, White-crowned Sparrow.…

By Ilana DeBare

Go Bears! Spot that warbler!

That’s a chant you’re unlikely to hear from the packed bleachers of Memorial Stadium during a Cal-Stanford football game.

But it’s a chant we’ll be mouthing silently to ourselves on April 13, when Golden Gate Bird Alliance faces off against Santa Clara Valley Audubon in Birding’s Big Game — the first-ever Cal-versus-Stanford birding competition!

As part of our annual Birdathon fundraising month, a team of U.C. faculty, staff, students, and community members will spend four hours combing the Cal campus in Berkeley to find as many bird species as possible. Our rivals in Santa Clara Valley Audubon will be doing the same thing on the Stanford campus.

How many will we find — 40? 50? more?

“I’m aiming for 50 species,” said Maureen Lahiff, a lecturer in Applied Statistics at the School of Public Health who is leading the Golden Gate Bird Alliance team. “I don’t know if we’ll get there, but we have a good shot.”

Bears go birding!

Mention the U.C. Berkeley campus to most people, and they’re more likely to picture undergrads tossing Frisbees or activists gathering signatures than wrens or flycatchers.

But the campus has been part of GGBA’ Christmas Bird Count circle for decades. It includes a variety of habitats such as creeks, oak hillsides, and redwood groves. It also has a birding jewel in the form of the U.C. Botanical Garden — 34 acres of trees, bushes and flowering plants from around the world.

One of the co-leaders of the Cal birding team on April 12 will be Chris Carmichael, Associate Director of the Botanical Garden, who leads quarterly bird walks there.  If anyone can find birds in the garden, it’s him.

“The nice thing about an April date is that we’ll have the end of wintering birds like Fox Sparrow, while migrants like Black-headed Grosbeaks and Hooded Orioles should also be back by then,” Carmichael said. “One of the treasures of the Garden is California Thrasher, which we find in the upper corner by the roses…. The intersection of natural habitats and the (international) habitats that we create leads to a very rich birding area.”

Joining Lahiff and Carmichael as team leaders will be Erica Rutherford and John Colbert, a graduate of U.C.’s Haas School of Business, who will focus on the parts of campus in Strawberry Canyon but outside the Garden.

They’ll all be birding with students from The Wildlife Society at Berkeley, a new student group that formed just this year.…